Light beams such as laser beams are used in a variety of applications including scanned beam displays and scanned beam image capture devices.
One approach to providing certain wavelengths of light is to use a wavelength converting material such as a second harmonic generation (SHG, aka frequency doubling) material to convert an input or pump beam of a first wavelength to an output beam having a different wavelength. For example, an SHG laser may include an infrared source that is operable to provide an input beam at 1064 nanometers (nm) that is received by the SHG material and frequency-doubled to a 532 nm green light output beam. Several wavelength converting materials are commercially available including, for example, potassium titanium oxide phosphate (KTP), periodically-polled lithium niobate (PPLN), rare earth-vanadate crystals, and non-linear organic (NLO) materials such as dyes.
Frequently it is desirable to provide plural wavelengths of light beams in a system. In one example, a 532 nm output beam provided by an SHG laser may be combined with red and blue beams of light produced by laser diodes to produce a red, green, and blue (RGB) composite output beam. Typically the beams may be combined using a beam combining device such as an X-cube beam combiner that receives beams at each of the input wavelengths and outputs a combined or composite output beam along an output axis.
The present disclosure provides improvements over the prior art such as with respect to size, cost, integration, power consumption, performance, etc.